[Witness spoke in Heiltsuk]
[English]
I am of the Heiltsuk from Bella Bella. We are the salmon people. Salmon play a key role in our lives. Around 10,000 years ago, Heiltsuk built salmon weirs after the last ice age and also transplanted them from salmon-bearing streams to non salmon-bearing streams.
My chief's name, Yím̓ ás ⅄áλíya̓ sila, talks about when our first ancestor came down from above as a half-man, half-eagle and landed on a salmon trap. What you see here is an artistic rendition of that name, which goes back to the beginning of time.
We have a sacred covenant with salmon back to the olden times when food was scarce and an ancestor went into the salmon world where Maesila was the salmon chief. This ancestor brought back teachings, laws and ways to be in relationship with salmon. Still today, this ancient relationship is recognized within our Heiltsuk potlatch ceremonies, where twins lead our salmon dance. Many of our existing village sites are close to salmon rivers within our territory.
When we transitioned from the traditional economy to the cash economy, our rivers in our territory were overflowing with salmon. Our old people said that you could walk across the salmon, because it was so plentiful. Now, today, they are nearly barren of any salmon. In their last count, there were five or six pieces on their return.
Over time, we adapted and adopted and had a fishing fleet of both seine boats and gillnetters. In our recent history, salmon was a major economic driver for our village, with millions of dollars generated through our local band store, fuel company, fishing fleet, fish plant and other spinoff benefits. We currently own a 50,000-square-foot fish plant that is now completely underutilized. We not only had a large fishing fleet but shore workers who depended on the plant for a livelihood.
This statement is representative of the majority of coastal fishing communities in British Columbia.
We chose not to participate in finfish aquaculture because we could not turn our backs on wild salmon. We have opposed finfish activity from 2003 onwards, when an Atlantic salmon hatchery was established in Ocean Falls. My granny Maggie's grandfather, Andrew Wallace, was the chief of this village. This place had an abundance of salmon. They called it Ocean Falls because the river sounded like the ocean, and again, salmon was abundant.
The decision to hold our relationship to salmon and not participate in finfish aquaculture because of the disease, escapement and habitat impacts has had a devastating toll on the Heiltsuk people and has had a major impact on our employment and economic and social existence.
We have taken from wild salmon and it is now time to give back and look after these wild salmon. We need to invest in habitat restoration and research to find out why these salmon are not surviving in the ocean. Could it be the big blobs, the ocean acidification? We need to plan and support these fishing communities. It's imperative. This needs to be addressed at local, regional and transboundary levels.
We need to reconcile our relationship with the earth before we can reconcile our relationship with Canada, which is one of the major political drivers of the nation-state of Canada.
We're going to continue to uphold our responsibility and we're willing and able to work with Canada to address the needs of the salmon. We want to uphold the doctrine of priority that was established through Sparrow, where conservation comes first; first nations' social, ceremonial and food requirements are second; and commercial and commercial recreation come third and fourth.
We need to transition from DFO central management to a more collaborative management system.
We need to transition to support indigenous participation in all levels of management and fisheries science.
We need to rework environmental standards, with indigenous people involved, look at projects on a cumulative basis, pay attention to enforcement of regulations and account for the real price of resource extraction and continued pollution.
We need to treat salmon with the respect they deserve as a culturally important icon of not only indigenous people, but all people in Canada.
We need to consider a managed harvest of seals and sea lions to reduce their impact as a threat to the survival of wild salmon in B.C., and provide economic opportunity to first nations harvesters as a part of an economic reconciliation initiative.
We need to ensure indigenous people in B.C. are equipped as allies on salmon issues with indigenous organizations from Alaska to Oregon.
We need to support the development of the national indigenous guardians network, to be the eyes and ears on the land and sea.
We need to remove open pen fish farms from the Pacific waters to give our wild salmon a fighting chance, and to save the genetic biodiversity of these wild salmon as a strategy to manage through the precautionary principle.
Walas Gixiasa. Thank you.